SME Requirements and Guidelines for the Design of Smart and Highly Adaptable Manufacturing Systems
Erwin Rauch, Andrew R. Vickery, Christopher Brown, Dominik T. Matt
Abstract
SME manufacturers face the challenge of implementing smart and highly adaptable manufacturing systems to produce individual products at the lowest price and with the shortest lead time. This chapter shows an approach based on an explorative field study combined with Axiomatic Design theory to collect the specific requirements of SMEs introducing Industry 4.0 in their production. Customer/user needs for the design of smart and adaptable SME manufacturing systems are transferred into functional requirements. These functional requirements are then used to define a set of design parameters and guidelines, which are addressed to support practitioners from industry in the implementation of smart manufacturing systems. These guidelines help system designers to improve their design at an early stage before making costly decisions and to reduce complexity to a minimum.